


151 ways to your heart

by andreaphobia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, and everyone else is just watching the show, i can't believe myself, keith is oblivious, lance is a disaster, self-indulgent pokemon go au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-24 17:45:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7517501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia/pseuds/andreaphobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Hey!” he yelled across the street, not caring that his voice was probably carrying all the way to the dorms; it wasn’t like anyone would actually try to sleep before midnight, right?</p>
  <p>Mullet-boy didn’t even look up. He was tapping at his screen, and Lance knew he was furiously trying to make a dent in Rover’s HP, the complete <i>monster</i>. God, what had Rover ever done to <i>him</i>?</p>
  <p>“HEY!” Lance yelled again. “Why don’t you just Pokémon GO ON HOME?!”</p>
</blockquote>When he set out to catch them all, he didn't think he'd catch feelings, too. OR: Lance meets a guy named Keith while playing Pokémon GO, and then things get out of control. Featuring long-suffering Hunk, accidental matchmaker Shiro, and Pidge, who is really just along for the ride.
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started from the idea of Pokemon GO meet cute, but, like the summary says, quickly spun out of control. I am so, so sorry for this self-indulgent tripe. I have no excuses. 
> 
> A big thank you to [skyfireflies](http://archiveofourown.org/users/skyfireflies), who helped to outline and proofread and provided much encouragement.

It was a beautiful summer evening; it was still relatively light out at half past eight, them being in the northern hemisphere and all, and Lance had differential equations homework to do, so he decided to go for a walk. A Pokéwalk, to be exact—for, like so many others his age who were reliving their childhoods, he had become obsessed with ‘catching them all’.

Lance hadn’t expected to get _that_ into it, but something about its combination of nostalgia, easy mechanics, and the Skinner box-like joy of collecting meaningless doodads all came together to create the perfect storm of addiction. If he wasn’t in class or grudgingly studying, you could probably find him rambling around his college town with his head down, barely avoiding the various obstacles and pitfalls of the real world, such as lampposts, open manholes, and other people. (This made him somewhat frustrating to travel with, but his roommate Hunk was nothing if not adaptable: he’d figured out that the best way to get them to classes on time was to keep a firm grip on Lance’s arm with which to steer him in the right direction, and by this point was probably one of the only things standing between Lance and flunking out of school.)

“These equations aren’t gonna solve themselves, you know,” Hunk said, totally conversationally and not at all judgmentally, as he watched Lance put on his shoes.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance said, indifferent. “I’m just gonna take a loop around the block, I’ll be back in an hour.”

“The last time you said that, you came back after midnight.”

“Well, you know what? A man’s gotta defend his territory.” Fiddling with his phone, Lance got the game open, and then swiveled the view around to observe his domain. Once again, there were dark clouds erupting over the gym at the pizza place down the street; a sure sign that members of Team Valor were being a bunch of lousy punks who didn’t know what was good for them.

“They’re attacking my gym again,” he muttered. “ _My_ gym. I’ve gotta get down there, show them who’s boss.” He cracked his knuckles menacingly. “Put ‘em up in the Pokémon center for a night or two.”

Hunk gave him a nervous look. “Maybe chill, dude? I think you’re taking this stuff way too seriously.”

“You just don’t get it, do you?” said Lance, with a patronizing little shake of the head. “Besides, I’m chill. _Super_ chill. I’m so chill that if you licked me, your tongue would get stuck.”

“Ugh.” Hunk made a face. “No thanks,” he said, but Lance was already out the door.

*

As usual, there were dozens of people milling around outside the pizza place, and all of them were staring intently at their phones. Being conveniently located at the midpoint of a cluster of three Pokéstops, the pizza place had become a very popular hangout for almost any time of day. After exchanging greetings with a couple of the other regulars, and spending a minute or two shooting laser eye-beams across the way at where their enemies were gathered, Lance got to work. He took up residence under a streetlamp, pulled up the gym, and began tapping like his life depended on it.

Most of the time, the gym was blue, allowing Lance to add more sweet, sweet Pokécoins to his stash, but every once in a while a gang of Team Valor scoundrels forgot their place and made incursions onto his territory. There was little that Lance enjoyed more in this world than grinding their gym levels into dust and displacing their teams with his own precious babies, and he didn’t hold back. He made quick work of an Arbok, Pidgeotto, Golbat, and Vaporeon, carving out room for the blue team players near him, and kept going.

Ten o’clock came and went, and by then it was dark out. As his phone ticked down to half battery, he remembered that he’d meant to go for a walk, not stand around all night—and although it was past time for him to be heading back to the dorm, he couldn’t just go home without actually doing the thing he said he’d do, could he?

So, Lance walked. Leaving the pizza place behind, he hit all the Pokéstops around the south side of town, making short work of the gyms along the way, then looped back systematically. By that point, the crowd had thinned out; just a few stragglers remained, and as Lance settled in again for another round of gym battles, they began to peel away one by one, probably to get a start on their neglected homework.

_Buncha quitters,_ Lance thought to himself. Lance might have been a lot of things (the words “obnoxious” and “egotistical” came to mind), but he wasn’t no _quitter_. He waited until there was no one left, and then once again began the process of expelling the trespassing red team from his backyard.

“There,” he said with satisfaction, to no one in particular, as he reinstated his 1700 CP Arcanine to its rightful place as the heir to the pizza throne. And he was just about to pocket his phone and head back to the dorm, when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the prestige of his newly-reclaimed gym decrease.

_Someone was still battling for it._ “Son of a—” Lance muttered, whipping his head from side to side in a frantic search for the infiltrator. He saw someone standing across the street—and oh, he’d recognize that mullet anywhere. That mullet sat in the front row in his solid mechanics class, and always put his hand up to ask really concise and helpful clarifying questions. Like, who even _did_ that kind of thing in college? It had to be ironic or something.

The mullet was also wearing a really gaudy red jacket. For a moment, Lance felt sorry for him; maybe he was colorblind? But then he shook it off, because even if colorblindness was the reason the mullet had chosen the wrong team, that didn’t make it _okay_.

“Hey!” he yelled across the street, not caring that his voice was probably carrying all the way to the dorms; it wasn’t like anyone would actually try to sleep before midnight, right?

Mullet-boy didn’t even look up. He was tapping at his screen, and Lance knew he was furiously trying to make a dent in Rover’s HP, the complete _monster_. God, what had Rover ever done to _him_?

“HEY!” Lance yelled again. “Why don’t you just Pokémon GO ON HOME?!”

This time, the mullet did glance up, but he didn’t stop tapping, and after a moment he returned his focus to his phone, as though the interruption had barely registered.

“Oh, so you wanna play _that_ game, huh?” Lance muttered, and took his phone back out.

As they fought, Lance was vaguely aware that time was passing, much in the same way that children are aware that adults spend most of their time “working” to make something called “money”: it didn’t matter to him at all. Thrice the gym exchanged hands, leading to a stream of curse words from Lance and nothing at all from the mullet (Lance supposed he only talked when he needed clarification on the Euler buckling formula, or something).

At five minutes past two in the morning, he was moments from landing the finishing blow that would turn the gym blue again when his phone buzzed, interrupting the battle to present a message from one concerned roommate, name of Hunk:

> _listen, i know you said you were going to be back in an hr but its 2am and you havent sent any texts and i really dont want to have to call the campus cops but if youre not back or message me soon im going t..._

The screen went black, taking with it both the text and the glorious gym battle. After five straight hours of playtime, his phone had given up the ghost, overtaxed by the final effort of displaying Hunk’s message.

“NO!” Lance shrieked, as though he’d been stabbed through the heart. He hammered the power button on his phone, but it was like trying to give CPR to someone who was long dead. Feeling eyes on him from across the street, he looked up reluctantly. Mullet-boy had clearly been hanging around, waiting for the gym to turn blue again, but Lance’s crazed exclamation, coupled with the fact that the gym remained stubbornly red, was enough to clue him in about what had happened. For the first time all night, he had moved into the light of a street lamp, and was staring back at Lance.

Wincing internally, Lance waited for him to say something: some kind of ego-crushing one-liner, like something out of a movie or something. But mullet-boy only smirked—smirked like Lance wasn’t even _worth_ coming up with an insult for, like it was beneath him. It wasn’t even a _full_ smirk, either, but a lazy one, barely visible in the half-light, a look bordering on disdain.

Then he turned, and walked off, leaving Lance alone outside the dark pizza parlor, in the shadow of Team Valor.

*

It wasn’t as though Lance didn’t _know_ when he was being insufferable—he could be oblivious, sure, but Hunk knew he wasn’t stupid or anything. It was just that he didn’t _care_.

“I didn’t _lose_ ,” he said to Hunk, suddenly, as they were eating in the dining hall a few nights thence. “My phone died because it’s a piece of crap. But it wasn’t a _real_ loss!” He stirred his soup a little too violently, sloshing some of it over the lip of the bowl, and then fumbled with napkins to try and soak up the mess he’d made.

Hunk only sighed. Sure, he’d been relieved when Lance had finally come home at two in the morning, even if he’d seemed to be in a snit about something. But after seventy-two hours of solid, single-minded complaining, it was starting to get a little old. Hunk was far too genteel to wish ill upon his friends, but he couldn’t help thinking sometimes that it would be just fine with him if Lance simply... lost his phone, and forgot to get a new one.

“Uh-huh. You’ve mentioned,” said Hunk, patiently, the way one might speak to a child who was embroiled in a days-long tantrum.

Not listening, Lance continued to mutter to himself.

“—battery died... could have happened to anyone. Doesn’t mean he’s _better_ than me.”

“Of course not,” Hunk said, absently slathering more mayo on his sandwich. Maybe this was just a phase, he thought. Like Yugioh cards, or something. Eventually, Lance had to learn how to let things go, right?

Or maybe not. He jumped as Lance bounded suddenly out of his chair, and almost dropped his sandwich.

“What, what is it?” he asked, slightly freaked out. “Is it another pokeyman thing?”

Lance didn’t seem to hear him. “He’s HERE!” he shouted, and was off like a shot.

“Who—oh no.” Shoulders slumping, Hunk looked longingly down at his sandwich. He’d been _this_ close to enjoying a nice, peaceful dinner, without any confrontations or angry altercations. Just him and a beautifully-crafted artisan sandwich, with the dulcet tones of Lance’s intermittent whining to aid digestion.

Come to think of it, if he’d wanted to enjoy peaceful dinners, he probably shouldn’t have agreed to room with Lance. With a sigh, he returned his sandwich to its wrapper, and got up. He had a tendency to feel a certain, almost parental, responsibility towards Lance, so if Lance was going on a rampage, he could hardly just look the other way.

He made his way gingerly across the dining hall—“sorry, ‘scuse me”—following in Lance’s wake. When he arrived, Lance was already grabbing the guy by the shoulder to spin him around.

“ _Lance_!” Hunk hissed, trying to get his attention, but as usual, Lance wasn’t listening.

“You’re on Team Valor, right?” he demanded, puffing himself up threateningly, like a cat trying to make itself look twice its size.

“So what if I am?” said the guy, looking confused.

“So—so—” Distracted by the guy’s nonchalance, Lance floundered a little, before remembering why he was there and rallying in magnificent fashion. “So stay away from the Cheeseboard gym! That’s _my_ gym!”

That made the guy’s face change. He stepped back, looking Lance up and down, as though recognition was finally dawning on him. (Privately, Hunk wondered how Lance had failed to make a big enough impression the first time; it wasn’t as though he was the kind of guy who traveled under the radar. Perhaps there was more than one reason why Lance was so perturbed by him.)

“I guess that means you’re, uh, _Lancealot_?” said the guy. “Dumb name, by the way.”

Lance glowered at him.

“It’s a _pun_ ,” he said, in a superior tone of voice. “I use my _lance a lot_ , you see. I’m a sex god.” He paused for good effect, then added, “Not that I’d expect _you_ to understand.”

“It just looks like you don’t know how to spell ‘Lancelot’,” said the guy.

“Oh, screw you!” Lance snapped, shedding any pretense of restraint. “I don’t want to hear that from a guy who calls himself _kchen-underscore-two thousand_. Like, _bo-ring_! What kind of name is that, anyway?”

The one who went by the moniker _kchen_2000_ merely shrugged. “ _kchen_ was already taken?”

They were loud enough—well, it was mostly Lance being loud, but he was loud enough for two—that the other people in the dining hall were starting to look around and take notice. That was the problem with Lance, Hunk thought in despair, or at least one of the problems with him: he seemed to think he was the star of his own personal action movie, and acted accordingly. Most of the time, this was amusing in a harmless way, but every once in a while it led to disaster. Like right now, or the time that Lance said he was going to break a board with his kung-fu moves, and ended up in the hospital. He just didn’t think things _through_.

“What’s going on?” said a girl with bushy brown hair and thick glasses, coming up beside Hunk. “Is there a fight?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Hunk desperately. “Do you know these guys? I don’t know them. Let’s just pretend we don’t know them.”

The girl squinted. “Hmm. I think I know them.” She adjusted her glasses. “The guy with the red jacket is Keith. He lives on my floor. And the other one is your roommate, Lance.”

Hunk was about to ask her how on earth she knew that when Lance launched himself at Keith, knocking them both into a dining table, which then fell on top of them. People were gathering around, both cheering and heckling. The girl’s eyes had gone wide. Thinking fast, Hunk acted.

“Can you—uh, can you make sure that Keith guy is okay? I’m gonna grab—I’ll just—I’ll get the other one,” said Hunk, trying to sound more upbeat than hopeless.

The girl nodded, and so, steeling himself, Hunk waded into the fray.

“Okay, you guys, break it up,” he said loudly, hoping his voice would carry over the crowd, although—on closer inspection—there wasn’t really much of anything to break up. Keith, who had probably never been pounced on in his life, just looked sort of shocked and confused, and Lance appeared to have dazed himself on a piece of furniture. Hunk reached down and untangled him from the chair that he’d managed to get himself wrapped around, and then began dragging him away through the crowd.

All eyes were on him. He laughed nervously as Lance stirred, regaining lucidity just long enough to yell, “And stay away from my gym, dammit!” before going limp again.

“We are going to have a serious talk when we get back to the dorm, okay?” he muttered as they exited the dining hall, over the sound of Lance’s weak protests. “Because you—you need _serious_ help.”

Lance just grunted, and Hunk tried not to feel as though he was crying on the inside. You knew things were bad when you didn’t even _play_ the damn game and it was still ruining your life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this one, Keith learns a little about how to make friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unproofed, sorry for any typos. :{

Even after several days had passed, Keith could hardly believe that he’d nearly been assaulted over Pokémon, of all things. Sure, he hadn’t actually gotten _hurt_ , but that wasn’t for lack of trying; it was just that that Lance guy was a complete and utter dolt who probably didn’t know up from down. And yes, Keith had probably spent over sixty percent of his waking hours over the past two weeks playing the game himself, and _yes_ , he did pride himself on having the strongest team on his floor by a long shot, but that other guy— _man_. At least Keith had _limits_.

By then, he’d at least figured out that this probably had something to do with the events of the night he’d taken the Cheeseboard gym. He couldn’t remember doing anything offensive, but it was possible—probable?—that it was some unspoken social agreement he’d broken. Or maybe Lance was just a flaming asshole. (And it was just a guess, but he was pretty sure which of those two options he found more likely.)

Anyway, everything about it pissed him off. And because he couldn’t make sense of it, because maybe there _was_ no sense to be made (which was a likely conclusion to come to wherever interpersonal relationships were involved), Keith dealt with it in the way he knew best: by ignoring it entirely.

It wasn’t bad, as far as coping strategies went, and maybe it would even have worked if—for example—he’d gotten on a spaceship and went to live on a distant planet where he’d never have to interact with another human being ever again.

However, since this was not actually possible, Keith found himself in the unfortunate position of still having to talk to people, at least sometimes. For example, there was Pidge—that girl who lived on his floor and who appeared, to most casual observers, to be surgically attached to her laptop. She spent most of her time hanging around in the common room because she didn’t want to bother her roommate with her typing—and to be fair, she did an awful lot of typing. She was a CS major, and kind of a weirdo (not that Keith had the moral high ground to be making statements like that about other people).

He’d heard rumors that ‘Pidge’ was not her real name, but even the professors called her that, so he did, too.

Keith didn’t go out of his way to talk to her (or anyone, for that matter), but she seemed to make it a point to greet him, whenever he passed her on his way outside. Perhaps, Keith thought, this was just one of those things that people did.

“Hello,” she said, seated at her usual table in the common room as he went by, phone in hand. “Going Pokémon hunting?”

“Yep.”

“Cool.” After a moment, she added, quite casually, “Make sure you keep an eye out for that Lance guy.”

Keith stopped in his tracks. He had a funny sinking sensation in his stomach that probably had nothing to do with the instant ramen he’d eaten for lunch.

“Lance guy?” he asked, carefully. “What, uh, Lance guy?”

“Oh, you know,” said Pidge, not even bothering to raise her eyes from the screen of her laptop. “The one who’s been following you all over the place, even though his classes are on the opposite end of campus?”

Keith choked.

“What do you mean, following me? I—wha— _how_ —”

“Well, you see,” said Pidge, slowly and carefully, over the assault weapon sound of her typing, “I have these things called _eyeballs_ , which are aided by the glasses that I wear on my face, that let me see things such as the fact that you are being stalked by a literal insane person. Or, you know.” She shrugged. “Everyone is talking about it?”

“They are?” Keith said, miserably. It probably went without saying, but he’d never been stalked before. Should he be alarmed? What was the correct response to a stalking? Did he need to get the authorities involved?

Correctly interpreting the apprehension on his face, Pidge beamed at him in a way that she clearly felt was reassuring.

“Don’t worry,” she said, brightly. “I’m sure he’ll have gotten over it by the time we graduate.”

Unsurprisingly, this didn’t alleviate any of Keith’s concerns.

It was bizarre how he hadn’t noticed it before, but since it had been pointed out to him he started seeing Lance everywhere. Lounging around on the lawn outside Keith’s lab period whenever he happened to glance out the window, or leering at him while standing in line for Mexican food at the dining hall—once, he even caught Lance peeking at him around a corner like the literal Looney Tune that he was, and immediately turned around and went the other way.

And it wouldn’t have mattered, but it was starting to affect his studies, which _did_ matter. n the day that he got his linear algebra pop quiz back with a B+, he decided that enough was enough. _Something_ had to be done.

Problem was, Keith didn’t really have anything that you could call a support group—there was Pidge, maybe, if your bar for friendship was low enough that exchanging occasional greetings in the common room met it—and then there was Shiro. Shiro was a graduate student in the aeronautical engineering department who TA’ed Keith’s solid mechanics class, and Keith was a staple at his office hours.

Thanks to this, they had struck up something of a rapport, and on the day that he’d decided to do something about it, he somehow found himself in Shiro’s office trying to—well— _talk_ about things. It didn’t exactly come easy to him, but with some mild encouragement from Shiro, the whole sordid tale soon came spilling out of him.

“—and then he _jumped_ me, if you can believe that, and we fell, and knocked over a table. Then, uh... his friend came, and... uh... dragged him off of me.”

Having reached the end of his story, he stopped there, unsure of how to continue. Up to that point, Shiro had been listening quietly, though with eyebrows slightly raised. But when Keith fell silent, it seemed to fall to him to speak, so he cleared his throat.

“He... _jumped_ you?” Shiro asked. For reasons unknown to Keith, he sounded quite perturbed.

“Yeah,” said Keith, and then amended, “Kinda. Well... he threw himself at me? Then fell on top of me, I guess.”

Shiro’s eyebrows continued to inch towards his hairline.

“Did he... uh... end up hurting you?”

“Well... not really.” Keith had to admit that he’d come out of the incident surprisingly unscathed; apart from having the wind knocked out of him from the fall, he barely had a scrape. (Lance, on the other hand, had probably given himself a concussion—not that this mattered much, since he always acted kinda crazy.) “He didn’t, like, punch me or anything. But—that’s not the point!” Scowling, he crossed his arms. It was clear that he’d failed to communicate the severity of his situation; in fact, Shiro rather looked like he was suppressing laughter.

“And he’s been following you around campus, you said?” Shiro asked.

“Maybe,” said Keith suspiciously. “Why are you smiling?”

Shiro didn’t answer him right away. Instead he made a thoughtful noise, and leaned back in his chair. He steepled his fingers in front of his face, like he was trying to shape his thoughts into words. At long last, he spoke, but it wasn’t what Keith wanted to hear. “Do you think he’s cute?”

Keith sputtered. “ _What_?” Clearly the entire world had gone mad, and he’d only just gotten the memo. Because if there was a route from the story he’d just told to the question that Shiro had just asked him—well, he sure as hell couldn’t see it.

Watching him over steepled fingers, Shiro just sighed.

“Look,” he said, “this is just a theory of mine, but...”

*

Nearly half an hour passed before Keith managed to extract himself from Shiro’s office, though this was not without learning some things about human nature that he really, really didn’t want to know. And wasn’t it fascinating, in a way that was simultaneously funny and awful, how wrong of an impression you could give someone of a situation if you were as bad at communicating as Keith was? Because there was no way that what Shiro had said could be true. It just—it _couldn’t_.

Could it?

To summarize, Shiro’s theory was this: either Lance was developing some very aggressive kind of brain tumor that would shortly be claiming his life, _or_ , he had a really big crush on Keith.

(Given how much Keith sucked at reading people, he didn’t really fancy his chances playing the Lance-crush lottery.)

After all, it was entirely possible that Shiro was just making things up. He wasn’t involved in the whole mess; it wasn’t _his_ skin on the line or _his_ ass being stalked by some unbalanced Pokémaniac. Shiro might have been devastatingly good-looking, smart, and capable to boot, but he was still only human. Maybe he’d just gotten it wrong.

All the same, armed with his newfound knowledge of the world of romantic dalliances between human beings, Keith began to see everything in a terrifying new light. It was a world of _feelings_ ; a kind of twilight zone where sometimes people got crushes on other people, and those crushes made them act like they had brain tumors. As far as he knew, there was no precedence for people having crushes on _him_ , per se, but there was probably a first time for everything.

He tried studying himself in the mirror critically to determine which, exactly, of his physical characteristics made him “crushable”, but, after ten minutes of silent staring, had to conclude that he still didn’t know what Lance saw in him. Yet there had to be _something_ , he thought to himself, grimly, or he wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.

He found himself longing for a world where people communicated in a straightforward manner, without relying on anything as nebulous as body language. Then that Lance guy could just have come up to him and said _I like you, let’s go do whatever it is that people who like each other do!_ , and all Keith would have had to do would be to say _heck yes_ or _heck no_ , and that would’ve been the end of it.

But, as Keith knew, nothing was ever that simple when other people were involved...

*

Pidge had quite a lot of faith in her observational skills, but it wouldn’t have taken a genius to notice the new and very conspicuous presence of Keith in the common room every evening. It wasn’t that she minded, of course; the common room didn’t belong to her, and she wasn’t fundamentally opposed to having company there. But she always pegged Keith as a creature of habit, and it wasn’t like him to be moping around indoors, which probably meant that something was up.

“Aren’t you going to go Pokémon hunting?” she asked, curiously, watching him over her laptop. Keith, who was seated on the couch by the wall, morosely browsing his Pokémon collection, didn’t look up.

“No,” he said in a dull voice.

“Why not?”

Silence.

“Is it because of the Lance thing?”

More silence; Pidge took this to mean _yes_ , and sighed.

“Have you, uh.... tried talking to him about it?”

She watched as Keith’s thumb stopped moving, mid-scroll. He had a look on his face as though the thought had honestly never even crossed his mind.

“No,” he said, again.

“Well, maybe you should give that a try,” she said, brightly, as though that solved the matter.

Keith, however, was not to be consoled so easily. He looked as though he was still thinking, and hard.

At last he asked, “But what should I say?”

That... was a good question, actually. Certainly, no answer came to mind right away—but let it never be said that Pidge couldn’t improvise.

“Oh, you know,” she said, trying to sound authoritative, and not at all like she was making things up as she went along. “Just say hi to him, I guess. Be friendly. Kill him with kindness!”

Keith just stared at her. It occurred to Pidge that Keith was the sort of person who might know many ways of killing a man, but probably none of them involved kindness. She sighed.

“Just—you know—confide something in him. Taking someone into your confidence builds closeness. Or find some common ground! You guys both like Pokémon, right?”

“Yeah,” said Keith. “Enough that he tried to kill me over it.”

Helplessly, Pidge shrugged. “Maybe that’s his way of making friends?”

She seemed to have said the wrong thing, for Keith immediately clammed up. He stared down at his lap, although he didn’t seem to be focusing on anything in particular; instead, he was frowning a little, and... blushing? He really was. It was enough that Pidge would even have found it cute, if she happened to swing that (or any) way.

“Uhm,” she said, trying not to feel like a mom encouraging her son encouraging her son to go outside and play with the other kids. “Look. Just give it a try, okay? If it doesn’t work, you can at least say you tried.” And, feeling extra charitable, she added, “You can come back and tell me about it afterwards, if you want.”

Still staring at his lap, Keith nodded silently. When, after a few moments, he peeked at Pidge from under his bangs, she made encouraging shooing motions towards him. Still wearing a somewhat doubtful expression, Keith eventually rose and left.

She watched him head out to his doom, then shook her head, and went back to typing furiously.

*

After a brief but spirited search of the area around the dorms, during which he also made the occasional stop to catch Pokémon, Keith found Lance loitering around in the courtyard, staring at his phone. He was alone, which was good because at least there’d be no other witnesses if Keith managed to make a complete and utter fool of himself.

It took a few moments for Lance to notice when Keith’s shadow fell over him, but when he finally looked up, his expression darkened. Ignoring this, Keith forged ahead regardless.

“Hi,” he said, awkwardly. “Big guy’s not with you today, huh?”

Lance fixed him with a deeply suspicious look, one which probably would’ve wounded Keith, had he possessed normal human feelings. “Why are you talking to me?” he said. “Is this a trick? Are your Valor buddies hiding nearby so they can beat me up?”

“No,” said Keith, and then remembered: _confide in him_. “I, uh, don’t have buddies.”

Lance stared at him. “Dude. Sad.” Then he seemed to remember who he was talking to, and replaced the pity on his face with a disgruntled look. “Anyway, beat it. I’m meeting someone for dinner, and the last thing I need is to have you hanging around cramping my style.”

Briefly, Keith wondered if Lance had always been this annoying and rude, or if it was a skill that he’d honed over many years of being a total prick. Then he reminded himself to focus, and heard Pidge’s words in his mind: _Find common ground..._

“I caught an Electabuzz just now,” he announced, suddenly.

More than anything else he’d said before, that got Lance’s attention. “What? No way. Those things have gotta be rare as hell.”

Keith didn’t bother using words to argue his point; instead he produced his phone, and held it up to Lance to put the evidence in display—one Electabuzz, in the digital flesh.

“You weren’t kidding. Holy crap,” Lance breathed, the envy on his face clear as day. “When was this?”

“Um. A couple of minutes ago, on the way here,” said Keith, who was mainly relieved that Lance wasn’t glaring at him anymore. But he wasn’t so relieved when, in the next moment, Lance seized him by the shoulders.

“Take me there!” he yelled.

“You don’t have to shout,” Keith said, testily, once he’d managed to recover from the shock of someone yelling directly into his face. “I’m right here. Anyway, don’t I cramp your style?”

Letting go of him, Lance waved a hand impatiently. “Details, details,” he said. “We can talk about that after I’ve caught one, too.” He was jumping around like a kid at Christmas, and his enthusiasm was both frightening and contagious. “What are you waiting for?!”

Keith didn’t have an answer for that, so he led the way. And he started out at a walk, but Lance kept barreling ahead of him even though he didn’t know which way they were headed, and at some point—Keith wasn’t even really sure when—they were just flat-out running.

“I caught it over by the convenience store,” Keith panted, as they rounded a corner.

“Shit,” Lance muttered; his eyes were fixed on his phone. “It’s not showing up—wait—THERE!”

He came skidding to a stop and Keith came up beside him, watching intently over his shoulder. It was, in fact, an Electabuzz, and Keith was amazed that they’d even made it in time.

“Use a berry,” said Keith.

“I know _that_ ,” Lance snapped. “You don’t have to micromanage me, man.” He used a berry, and tossed the first ball, which was batted lazily away by Electabuzz, who wasn’t having any of this catching nonsense.

“Your throwing technique sucks,” Keith told him. Lance didn’t answer; he had a look of utmost concentration on his face, as he waited for the perfect moment. Then, he loosed the ball. It rose and fell in a perfect arc, landing squarely upon the head of Electabuzz, and swallowing it. One shake... two... it was caught.

“HELL YEAH!” Lance crowed, dancing around. He threw an arm around Keith’s shoulders to make him dance, too, and then let go just long enough to start typing. “I’m gonna name him Edison!”

“You name your Pokémon?” asked Keith, baffled.

“You _don’t_?” Having finished typing, Lance put his phone back into his pocket, beaming. Then his eyes met Keith’s, and his grin faded a little. But after a few awkward beats, it returned in full force, and he held up his hand.

“Here, gimme five.”

Seeing the way Keith stared at him as though he had two heads, Lance laughed.

“C’mon, man! You deserve it.”

Keith, who had never given anyone a high-five in his life, raised his hand slowly, as though he wasn’t sure what came next. For a few moments they both stood there with their hands up, and then Lance moved, high-fiving Keith with a loud _smack_.

“There, you big weirdo,” he said, sounding satisfied. “Good work. Listen, I gotta run, I’m late now and if I don’t show up, Hunk will ditch me. I will—” he grinned, “—catch you later. Get it? I’ll _catch_ you later? Ha!”

“Okay,” said Keith, who was struggling to process the fact that Pidge’s strategy of kindness homicide seemed to have actually worked. Also, his hand stung a little; he wasn’t sure he understood the point of high-fives. But, he thought, it wasn’t a bad kind of sting.

Still chuckling at his own ‘joke’, Lance waved and left.

Watching him go, Keith couldn’t help but feel that maybe there was something to this friend-making thing, after all...

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](http://andreaphobia.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](http://twitter.com/andreaphobia). Let's be Voltron buddies!


End file.
